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Friday, October 3, 2008

This afternoon I went to the hives to install the second round of Apigaurd treatment in both hives. Apigaurd is used to kill off the Varroa mites that have infested my hives. I picked up a few leaves of tobacco from the field and added it to my smoker...mmmmm good. It's said that tobacco smoke is also good for treating Varroa. Both Genesis and Exodus were pretty quite. I checked the weight of both hives and both seem to have a good amount stored up for the winter. I'm terrible as estimating weight, so I'll just say 50lbs? Here's a video of Exodus. (Notice how slow the bees were moving)

I removed the empty supers that were on top of each hive and fed the bees a winter syrup mixture. The recipe is 2.5 qts water and 10 lbs of sugar. Each hive got about 1.5 gallons.

Bee Battlefield

On top of Exodus, underneath the empty super that the bees had been cleaning up, I found dozens of dead bees, cut in half. Strange...I suppose they were battling robbing yellow jackets.

I also saw a field mouse in the area of my hives. So, sometime very soon I'll be installing the mouse guards on each hive.

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About Me

In 2008 I became a first-year beekeeper here in Northern Kentucky. I'm also the producer and host of "The Beekeeping Podcast", a podcast for beginner beekeepers. You can subscribe to the podcast using the link below.